Blizzard said they spent 200M on WoW between 2004 and 2008(this is for everything, not just server maintenance). They currently make 171M a month based on this article. I would bet you the money they made of the sales of the game alone(not including subscriptions or expansions) is much more than the money put into WoW. Lets say everyone plays wow for 4 years then quits, they have maintained 8M players for 8 years, and each game is $30. 8*2*30=480M. And this is probably under representing the amount of players.artix said:
And time one and time out we seen that F2P MMO's "fail" as well. Honestly define "fail", lack of subscriptions? not making the money back? boring? all the above?
If you can't play monthly fee or simply don't like the time that you have to put in to most MMO's this isn't the genre for you. I am happily to pay monthly fee for a MMO that is quality.
Sure Blizzard is making alot of money and they could cut back on price but this is a COMPANY in for the money, just like anything else in this world.
The server upkeek is around $120,000 to $140,000 A DAY! Now on top of that resources for creating new content it all ads up...
If WoW was F2P id think it wouldn't be as big or maybe it would... I don't know but honestly they wouldn't survive with JUST vanity items on sale... they would have to offer more.
Blizzard has become fithly rich off of WoW. End of story.
I dont think WoW was a failure. Blizzard makes alot of money off of it. People enjoy it for a while, then it gets boring like any other MMO or game for that matter. Most of the people say WoW is crappy and boring because it was their last impression of the game. They can't remember how they enjoyed it when they first started.ramonsterns said:
Any and all MMOs that are just like WoW and have a monthly fee will fail. This law has been proven true time and time again, so I hope that for all the crap it has brought it, that it will help SWTOR fail. If it doesn't, Bioware is lost to us.
I don't really know because i've never played the game(too expensive for my taste), but this is what i've experienced with other MMOs. After all why would you pay so much money for a boring game? You must have enjoyed it at some point.
" During a shareholder's call last month, Blizzard co-founder and president Mike Morhaime said subscriptions fell by 600,000 to 11.4 million between October 2010 and March 2011."milwaukeemike said:
Guest said:
12 million X ~$15.00/month = $180,000,000/month
$180 million X 12 months = $2,160,000,000 annually
Yes that's 2+ freakin BILLION dollars per year in subscriptions alone!
Do you think you are getting good value for your money WoW players?
and they have the nerve to charge for each expansion on top of that!
not quite... they have 12 million names in their database of people who have signed up for WoW at one time or another. It's why their ad says '12 million have experienced the intensity' not 12 mil ARE experiencing the intensity. I'm not sure they release the current subscriber numbers. They probably go up and down a lot, but i'd guess that this new promotion is here because the numbers are now going down more than they're going up. I heard Rift was a flash in the pan, so I can't speculate to what is taking WoW's players besides people not caring about it anymore.
how does the the number of all recorded subscriptions FALL??? it can only go up or stay flat, it will never decrease. It must be the current number of subscribers or it doesn't make any sense at all.
this is so true. Its amazing how many people complain that WoW is expensive but they go out to eat everyday, go to the movies, have $60/month internet, cable, unlimited cell phone plans, buy clothes on a weekly basis, etc.ithryl said:
wardogz said:
I can see plenty of these sub based games losing custom over the next year or so, the whole world is in a DEEP recession, about time these companies realised that. Everyone and his dog are having to tighten their belts and cut out non essential items like this, and as a vast amount of these online subs are paid for by the players parents, although 'little timmy' might not like it and indeed regard it as essential, i'm guessing his parents will not see it that way and it'll be one of the first things to be cut from the budget.
WoW is actually a money saver in many cases. Not talking about the little kids whose parents want to save the 13€ for sub(although once you cut 'little timmy' off he's gonna demand other things which are very likely more costly than the subscription). I know (not only) from my past experience that you actually spend time playing the game instead of going out and spending more than the subscription costs during one night. A friend of mine even stops smoking whenever he comes back to WoW. First of all though they should finish D3 already.
Anyways, good move from Blizzard. Even if just a small fraction of those who will be given the free account upgrade to full and start playing/paying. I just hope they're really working on the 'other' MMO and that they do something like a dual subcription.